Vistage's Deceptive Sales Call
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Shaan shares a story about how Vistage, a CEO networking group, used deceptive cold-calling tactics to sell memberships.
"I remember getting a phone call from some random number and it was 'Hey Shaan, this is Wendy from Vistage.' She asked 'Have we met?' and said 'I've actually heard a lot about you - you're the CEO of Monkey Inferno, right?'
When I asked where we met, she said 'No no, see I'm actually the chapter president for San Francisco for Vistage and I want to invite you to join our CEO network. We have CEOs from these companies and we think you'd be a great fit for our CEO group. We meet up about once a month in San Francisco.'
At first it sounded pretty legit since she knew my city and role. But then she said 'The membership is $20,000 a year' and I realized 'Oh okay, this is a sales call.' They were just cold calling C-level people with a script that made you feel like they were calling specifically for you based on your city, company name, and job title."
Shaan Puri
Host of MFM
Shaan Puri is the Chairman and Co-Founder of The Milk Road. He previously worked at Twitch as a Senior Director of Product, Mobile Gaming, and Emerging Markets. He also attended Duke University.